The Mystery of the Trinity

Schmidt Number: S-4918

On-line since: 31st January, 2013

LECTURE THREE

DORNACH, JULY 29, 1922

YESTERDAY I TRIED to show you
how a simple way can be found to envisage the human being's
relationships to the cosmos in terms of body, soul, and spirit.
Through the way in which I concluded yesterday's lecture by building
up to certain imaginative pictures, I wanted to draw attention
to certain things. I wanted to show how in such an imaginative
picture as that of Christ as the Lamb of God, inspired Imaginations
are truly and correctly expressed. I wanted to show that in the times
when such pictures were formed, when indeed they were voiced with
complete understanding and used for the life of the human soul,
a real consciousness was present of how the human being works upward
from his ordinary consciousness to conscious experiences in his soul,
experiences that connect him to the spiritual world. I have drawn
your attention to the fact that in the first four Christian
centuries what we could call the Christian teaching still
carried the impression that it was everywhere based on a real
perception of the spiritual, that even the secrets of Christianity
were presented as they could actually be seen by those who had
developed their soul life to a vision of the spiritual. After the
fourth century A.D.,
understanding of direct expressions of the spiritual faded away from
ordinary consciousness more and more. And with contact between the
Germanic peoples from the north and the Latin and Greek peoples of
the south during those early days of growth for Western culture we
see how these difficulties of understanding constantly
increased. We must be fully aware that in the times immediately
following the fourth century, people still looked with reverent
devotion at those imaginations from earlier times in which Christian
views were presented. Tradition was revered, and so too were
the pictures that had come down to posterity through tradition. But
the progressing human spirit continued to take on new forms.
Therefore, the human being was led to say: Yes, tradition has handed
down to us pictures such as the dove for the Holy Spirit and
the Lamb of God for Christ himself. But how are we to understand
them? How do we come to understand them? And out of this
impossibility, or rather, out of the faith that was born with the
conviction of the impossibility of the human spirit's ever achieving
perception of the spiritual worlds through its own powers, there
arose the Scholastic doctrine that the human spirit can achieve
knowledge of the sense world by its own power, can also reach
conclusions directly derived from concepts of the sense world, but
that the human being must simply accept as uncomprehended revelation
what can be revealed to him of the super-sensible world.

But this, I would like to say, twofold form
of faith in the human soul life did not develop without difficulties.
On the one hand there was knowledge limited to the earthly, while on
the other hand there was knowledge of the super-sensible attainable
only through faith or belief. Nevertheless, it was always felt,
although more or less dimly, that the human being's relationship to
super-sensible knowledge could not be the same as it was in olden
times. Concerning this feeling, people said to themselves in the
first period after the fourth century: In a certain sense the
super-sensible world can still be reached by the human soul, but it is
not given to all to develop their souls to such a height; most people
have to be content with simply accepting many of the old
revelations.

As I said, people revered these old
revelations so much that they did not wish to measure them against a
standard of human knowledge that no longer reached up to them. At
least, people did not believe that human knowledge was capable of
rising to the level of revelation. The strict Scholastic doctrine
concerning the division of human knowledge was actually only accepted
gradually; indeed it was not until the tenth, eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries of the Middle Ages that this
Scholastic tenet was fully admitted. Until that time there was still
a certain wavering in peoples' minds: Could it be possible after all
to raise this knowledge, which human beings could achieve at
this late date, up to the level of what belongs to the super-sensible
world?

The triumph of the Scholastic view meant
that, in comparison with earlier times, a mighty revolution had taken
place. You see, in earlier times, say, in the very first Christian
centuries, if someone had struggled through to Christianity and
then approached the mystery of divine providence, or the mystery of
the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of
Christ, he would have said: This is difficult to understand, but
there are people who can develop their souls so that they understand
these things. He would have said: If I assume the omniscience of the
Godhead, then this omniscient being must actually also know whether
one human being is damned for all time or whether another will enter
into blessedness. But this — such a person might have said
— hardly seems to agree with the fact that people need not,
inevitably, sin. And that if they sin they will then be damned; that
if they do not sin they will not be damned; that no one will be
damned if they do penance for a sin. One must say, therefore, that a
person, through the way he or she conducts their life, can either
make themselves into one of the damned through sin or into one of the
blessed through sinlessness. But again, an omniscient God must
already know whether an individual is destined for damnation or
blessedness.

Such would have been the considerations of
someone so confronted in the earliest Christian centuries.
However, in these early Christian centuries that person would not
have said: Therefore I must argue whether God foresees the damnation
or the blessedness of a human being. He or she would rather
have said: If I were initiated I would be able to understand that
although an individual may or may not sin, God knows
nevertheless who will be damned and who will be blessed. Thus would
someone living in the first centuries of Christendom have
spoken.

Similarly, if someone had told that person
that through transubstantiation, through the celebration of the
Eucharist, bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of
Christ, he would have said: I don't understand that but if I were
initiated I would. For in olden times a person would have thought:
What can be observed in the sense world are mere appearances; it is
not reality: the reality lies behind, in the spiritual world.
As long as one stands in the sense world, in this world of illusions,
it is a contradiction to say that someone can either sin or not
sin and that the omniscient God nevertheless knows in advance whether
an individual will be damned or blessed. But as soon as someone
enters the spiritual world it is no longer a contradiction. There one
experiences how it can be that God, nevertheless, sees ahead.
In the same way, a person would have said: In the physical world of
sense it is contradictory to say that bread and wine — which in
outward appearance remain the same — become the body and blood
of Christ after the transubstantiation. But when we are
initiated we will understand this, because then, in our soul
lives we are within the spiritual world. Thus would people have
spoken in olden times.

And then came the struggles in human souls.
On the one hand the souls of human beings found themselves more and
more separated, torn away from the spiritual world. The whole
trend of culture was to grant authority to reason alone, and
reason, of course, did not reach into the spiritual world. And out of
these struggles developed all kinds of uncertainties concerning the
super-sensible worlds. If we study the symptoms of history we can find
the points at which such uncertainties enter the world quite starkly.
I have often spoken of the Scottish monk Scotus Eriugena, who lived
in France at the court of Charles the Bald during the ninth century.
[Note 1]
At court he was regarded as a veritable miracle of
wisdom. Charles the Bald, and all those who thought as he did,
turned to Scotus Eriugena in all matters of religion and also of
science whenever they wanted a verdict. Now the way in which Scotus
Eriugena stood opposed to the other monks of his time shows how
fiercely the battle was then raging between reason, which felt itself
limited to the world of sense, along with a few conclusions derived
from that world, and the traditions that had been handed down from
the spiritual world in the form of dogmas. Thus in the ninth
century we see two personalities confronting one another:
Scotus Eriugena and the monk Gottschalk,
[Note 2]
who uncompromisingly asserted the doctrine that God has perfect
foreknowledge of an individual's future damnation or blessedness.
This teaching was gradually embodied in the formula: God has
destined one portion of humanity for blessedness and another for
damnation. The doctrine was formulated as Augustine himself had
formulated it. Following his teaching of predestination, one part
of humanity is destined for blessedness, another part for damnation.
[Note 3]
And the monk Gottschalk taught that it is indeed
so: God has destined one portion of the human race for blessedness
and another for damnation, but no portion is predestined for sin.
Thus, for external understanding, Gottschalk was teaching a
contradiction.

In the ninth century the strife was
extraordinarily fierce. At a synod in Mainz, for instance,
Gottschalk's writing was declared heretical, and he was scourged
because of this teaching. However, although Gottschalk had been
scourged and imprisoned on account of this doctrine he was able to
claim that he had no other desire than to reaffirm the teaching of
Augustine in its genuine form. Many French bishops and monks, in
particular, realized that Gottschalk was not teaching anything other
than what Augustine had already taught. And so a monk such as
Gottschalk stood before the people of his time teaching from the
traditions of the old mystery knowledge. However, those who now
wished to understand everything with the dawning intellect were
simply unable to understand and therefore contested his teaching. But
there were others who adhered more to reverence for the old and were
decidedly on the side of a theologian like Gottschalk.

It is extremely difficult for people today
to understand that things like this could be the subject of bitter
strife. When such teachings did not please parties with authority
their author was publicly scourged and imprisoned even though he
might be, and in this case was, eventually vindicated. For it was
precisely the orthodox believers who ranged themselves on the side of
Gottschalk, and his teaching remained the orthodox Catholic
doctrine. Charles the Bald, because of his relationship to
Scotus Eriugena, naturally turned to him for a verdict. Scotus
Eriugena did not decide for Gottschalk's teaching but as follows: The
Godhead is to be found in the evolution of mankind; evil can actually
only appear to have existence — otherwise evil, too, would have
to be found in God. Since God can only be the Good, evil must be a
nothing; but a nothing cannot be anything with which human beings can
be united. So Scotus Eriugena spoke out against the teaching of
Gottschalk.

But the teaching of Scotus Eriugena, which
was more or less the same as that of pantheists today, was in turn
condemned by the orthodox Church and his writings were only later
rediscovered. Everything reminiscent of his teaching was burned and
he came to be regarded as the real heretic. When he made known the
views he had explained to Charles the Bald, the adherents of
Gottschalk — who were now again respected — declared:
Scotus Eriugena is actually only a babbler who adorns himself with
every kind of ornament of external science and who actually knows
nothing at all about the inner mysteries of the
super-sensible.

Another
theologian wrote about the body and blood of Christ in
De Corpore et Sanguine Domini.
[Note 4]
In this writing he said something that, for the initiates of
old, had been an understandable teaching: that in actual fact bread
and wine can be changed into the real body and the real blood of
Christ. This writing, too, was laid before Charles the Bald. Scotus
Eriugena did not write an actual refutation but in his works we have
many a hint of the decision he reached, namely, that this, the
orthodox Catholic teaching of the transubstantiation of bread and
wine into the body and blood of Christ, must be modified because it
is not understandable to the human mind. This was how Scotus
Eriugena was able to express himself, even in his day.

In short, the conflict concerning the human
soul's relationship to the super-sensible world raged fiercely in the
ninth century, and it was exceedingly difficult for serious minds of
that time to find their bearings. For Christian dogmas contained
everywhere deposits, as it were, of ancient truths of initiation, but
people were powerless to understand them. What had been uttered in
external words was put to the test. These words could only have been
intelligible to a soul that had developed itself up into the
spiritual world. The external words were tested against that of which
people at that time had become conscious as a result of the
development of human reason. And the most intense battles
ensued within the Christian life of Europe from the testing of that
time.

And where were these inner experiences
leading? They were tending in the direction of a duality entirely
absent in former times. In earlier times the human being looked into
the sense world and, as he looked, his faculties enabled him
simultaneously to behold the spiritual pervading the phenomena of
this sense world. He saw the spiritual along with the phenomena of
the world of sense. The people of olden times certainly did not see
bread and wine in the same way people in the ninth century A.D. saw them,
that is, as being merely matter. In ancient times the material and
spiritual were seen together. So, too, the people in olden times
didn't have concepts and ideas as intellectual as those already
possessed by people living in the ninth century. The thinness
and abstraction of the concepts and ideas in the ninth century were
not present earlier. What people experienced earlier as ideas and
concepts was still such that concepts and ideas were like real
objects with essential being. Concepts and ideas in olden times were
not thin and abstract, but full of living reality, of objective
being. I have told you how subjects such as grammar, rhetoric,
dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astrology gradually
became entirely abstract. In olden times the human being's
relationship to these sciences was such that as he lived into
them, he entered into a relationship with real, actual beings. But
already by the ninth century, and still more in later times, these
sciences of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and so forth had become
wholly thin and abstract without living content of being —
almost, one might say, like mere pieces of clothing in comparison
with what had formerly been present. And this process of abstraction
continued. Abstraction increasingly became a quality of concepts and
ideas while concrete reality increasingly became nothing more than
the external sense world. These two streams, which we see in the
ninth century, and which influenced men to fight such devastating
soul battles — these two streams have persisted into modern
times. In some instances we still experience their conflict sharply,
in other instances the conflict receives less emphasis.

These
tendencies in the evolution of humanity stand with a living clarity
in the contrast between Goethe and Schiller.
[Note 5]
Yesterday, I spoke about the fact
that Goethe, having studied the botany of Linnaeus, was compelled to
evolve really living concepts and pictures of the plants —
concepts capable of change and metamorphosis, which, for this
reason, came near to being Imaginations. But I also drew your
attention to the fact that Goethe stumbled when his mind tried to
rise from plant life to the animal world of sentient experience. He
could reach Imagination but not Inspiration. He saw the
external phenomena. With the minerals he had no cause to advance to
Imagination; with plant life he did, but got no further because
abstract concepts and ideas were not his strong point. Goethe did not
philosophize in the manner customary in his day. Therefore, he was
unable to express in abstract concepts what is found at a spiritual
level higher than that of the plants.

But Schiller philosophized. He even learned
how to philosophize from Kant, although the Kantian way
ultimately became too confused for him and he left it.
[Note 6]
Schiller philosophized without the degree of abstraction that
prevents concepts from reaching actual being. And when we study
Goethe and Schiller together this is precisely what we feel to be the
fundamental opposition never really bridged between them, the
opposition that was only smoothed over through the greatness of soul,
the essential humanity that lived in both of them. However,
this fundamental difference of approach showed itself in the
last decade of the eighteenth century when Goethe and Schiller were
both occupied with the question: How can the human being achieve an
existence worthy of his dignity? Schiller set forth the question in
his own way in the form of abstract thought, and he what he had to
say about it appeared in his
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.
He says there:
The human being is, on the one hand, subject to the necessity
implicit in logic and reason. He has no freedom when he follows the
necessity of reason. His freedom goes under in the necessity of
reason. But neither is he free when he surrenders himself
wholly to the senses, to the necessity implicit in the senses; in
this sphere, instincts and natural urges coerce him and again he is
not free. In both directions, actually, toward the spirit and toward
nature, the human being becomes a slave, unfree. Schiller
concludes that the human being can only become free when he
views nature as if it were a living being, as if nature had spirit
and soul within it — in other words, if he raises nature to a
higher level. But then he must also bring the necessity implicit in
reason right down into nature. He must, as it were, regard nature as
if it had reason; but then the rigidity of necessity and logic vanish
from reason. When a human being expresses himself in pictures he is
giving form, creating, instead of logically analyzing and
synthesizing; and as he creates in this way he removes from nature
the element of necessity caused by the mere senses. But this
achievement of freedom, said Schiller, can only be expressed in
artistic creation and aesthetic appreciation. One who simply
confronts nature passively is under the sway of the necessity
implicit in nature, of instincts, natural desires, and urges. If he
sets his mind to work he must follow the necessity implicit in logic
— if he does not wish to be untrue to the human. When we
combine the two, nature and logic, then the necessity implicit in
reason subsides, then reason yields something of its necessity to the
sense world and the sense world of nature yields something of its
instinctual compulsion. And the human being is represented in works
of sculpture, for instance, as if spirit itself were already
contained in the sensible world. We lead the spirit down into the
sensuality of material nature while leading the sensuality of
material nature up to the spirit, and the creation through images,
the beautiful, arises. Only while creating or appreciating the
beautiful does the human being live in freedom.

In writing these
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,
Schiller strove with all the power of his soul to find out when it is
possible for a human being to be free. And the only possibility of realizing
human freedom he found in the life of beautiful appearances. We must
flee crude reality if we desire to be free, that is to say, if we
wish to achieve an existence worthy of a human being. This is what
Schiller really meant, though he may not have stated it explicitly.
Only in appearance, in semblance, can freedom really be attained.

Nietzsche,
who was steeped in all these matters, nevertheless could not penetrate
through to an actual perception of the spirit. In his first book,
The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music,
[Note 7]
he wanted to show that the Greeks created art in order to have something
through which, as free human beings in dignity, they might be able to
rise above the reality presented by the external senses, the reality
in which the human being can never achieve his true dignity. They
raised themselves above the reality of things in order to achieve the
possibility of freedom in appearances, in artistic appearances.
Thus did Nietzsche interpret Greek culture. And here Nietzsche merely
expressed, in a radical form, what was already contained in
Schiller's letters on the aesthetic education of man. Therefore, we
can say that Schiller lived in an abstract spirituality, but that at
the same time there lived within him the impulse to grant the human
being his true dignity. Just look at the sublimity, the greatness, of
his letters on aesthetic education. They are worthy of the very
highest admiration. In terms of poetic feeling, in terms of the power
of soul, they are really greater than all his other works. When we
think of the sum total of his achievements, these letters are the
greatest of them all. But Schiller had to struggle with them from an
abstract point of view, for he too had arrived at the intellectualism
characterizing the spiritual life of the west. And from this
standpoint he could not reach true reality. He could only reach the
shining appearance of the beautiful.

When Goethe read Schiller's letters on the
aesthetic education of man it was not easy for him to find his way
around in them. Goethe was actually not very adept at following the
processes of abstract reasoning. But he, too, was concerned with the
problem of how man can achieve true dignity, how spiritual beings
must work together in order to give the human being dignity so that
awakened to the spiritual world, he can live into it.

Schiller
could not emerge from the picture, or image, to the reality. What
Schiller had said in his letters, Goethe also wanted to say, but in
his own way. He did so in the pictures and imagery in his
Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
[Note 8]
In all the figures in this fairy tale we are to see powers of the
soul working together to impart to man his true dignity, in
freedom. But Goethe was unable to find the way from what he had been
able to express in Imaginations up to the truly spiritual. Hence, he
got no further than the fairy tale, a picture, a kind of higher
symbolism. It was, it is true, full of an extraordinary amount of
life; still, it was only a kind of symbolism. Schiller formed
abstract concepts, but remaining with appearance he could not get
into reality. Goethe, trying to understand the human being in his
freedom, created many pictures, vividly concrete pictures, but
they could not get him into reality either. He remained stuck with
mere descriptions of the world of sense. You see, his
description of the sense images in the
Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
are wonderfully beautiful, yet it cannot be said that the final freeing
of the crippled prince is intuitively obvious and real; it is only
symbolically real. Neither of the two contrasting streams expressed in the
personalities of Goethe and Schiller, could find a way into the real
experience of the spiritual world. Both were striving from opposite sides
to penetrate into the spiritual world, but could not get in.

What was really going on? What I am going to
say may seem strange. Nevertheless, those who approach these matters
without psychological bias will have to agree with the
following.

Think of the two streams present in
Scholasticism. For one, there is the knowledge from reason, creating
its content out of the world of sense but not penetrating through to
reality. This stream flows on through manifold forms, passing from
one personality to another, also down to Schiller. Scholasticism held
that one can only obtain ideas from the world of sense — and
Schiller was drawn into this way of knowing. But Schiller was far too
complete a human being to regard the sensuality of physical
matter as compatible with true human dignity. Scholastic knowledge
merely extracts ideas out of the world of sense. Schiller's solution
was to let go of the world of sense so that only ideas remain. But
with ideas alone he could not reach reality — he only reached
beautiful appearances. He struggled with this problem: What should be
done with this scholastic knowledge which man has produced out of
himself, so that he can somehow be given his dignity? His answer was
that one can no longer stay with reality, that one must take refuge
in the beauty of appearances. Thus you see how the stream of
scholastic knowledge from reason found its way to
Schiller.

Goethe did not care much for this kind of
knowledge. Actually he was much more excited by knowledge as
revelation. You may find this strange; nevertheless, it is true. And
even if he did not adhere to those Catholic dogmas, the necessity of
which became clear to him as he was trying to complete
Faust, and express them artistically, even if he
did not adhere to the Catholic dogmas of his youth, still he held to
things pertaining to the super-sensible world at the level he was able
to reach. To speak to Goethe of a faith — this, in a way, made
him furious. When, in Goethe's youth, Jacobi spoke to him about
belief, about faith, he replied: I keep to vision, to seeing.
[Note 9]
Goethe didn't want to hear anything about belief or faith. Those
who claim him for any particular faith simply do not understand
him at all. He was out to see, to behold. Furthermore, he was
actually on the way from his Imaginations to Inspirations and
Intuitions. In this way he could naturally never have become a
theologian of the Middle Ages, but he could have become like an
ancient seer of the divine, a seer of super-sensible worlds. He was
certainly on the way, but was simply unable to ascend high enough. He
only got far enough to see the super-sensible in the world of
the plants. When he studied the plant world he was actually able to
see the spiritual and the sensible next to one another as had the
initiates in the ancient mysteries. But Goethe got no further than
the plant world.

What, then, was the only thing he could do?
He could only apply to the whole world of the super-sensible the
pictorial method, the symbolism, the imaginative contemplation which
he had learned to apply to the plants. And so, when he spoke of the
soul life in his fairy tale he was only able to achieve an
imaginative presentation of the world.

Whenever the
Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.
mentions anything concerning plant life, anything that can be approached
with Imaginations such as those developed by Goethe for the world of
plants, then the writing is particularly beautiful. Just allow
everything expressed in the style of Imaginations of the plant world
in this fairy tale to work on you and you will feel a wonderful
beauty. Actually, the rest of the fairy tale's contents also have a
tendency to become plantlike. The central female figure, upon
whom so much depends, he names Lily. Goethe does not manage to imbue
her with real, potent life; he manages only to give her a kind of
plant existence. And if you look at all the figures appearing
in the fairy tale, actually they all lead a kind of plant existence.
Where it becomes necessary to raise them to a higher level, they
become mere symbols, and their existence is mere appearance at that
level.

The
kings that appear in the fairy tale aren't properly real either. They,
too, only manage to achieve a plantlike existence; they only claim to
have another kind of life as well. Something would have to be
in-spired into the golden king, the silver king, and the bronze
king before they could really live in the spiritual world.

Thus Goethe lived out a life of knowledge as
revelation, as super-sensible knowledge, which he has only mastered up
to a certain level. Schiller lived out the other kind of
knowledge, knowledge as reason, which was developed by
Scholasticism. But he could not bear this knowledge because he wanted
to follow it into reality and it could only lead him as far as the
reality of the beauty in appearances.

One can say that the inner truth of the two
personalities made them so upright that neither one said more than he
was truly able to say. Thus Goethe depicts the life of the soul as if
it were a kind of vegetation, and Schiller portrays the free
individual as if a free human being could only live aesthetically. An
aesthetic society — that, as the social challenge, is what
Schiller brings forward at the end of the letters on the aesthetic
education of man. If the human being is to become free, says
Schiller, let him so live that society manifests itself as beauty. In
Goethe's relationship to Schiller we see how these streams live on.
What they would have needed was the ascent from Imagination to
Inspiration in Goethe, and the enlivening of abstract concepts with
the imaginative world in Schiller. Only then could they have
completely come together.

If you look into the souls of both of them
you would have to say that both possessed qualities which could lead
them into a world of spirit. Goethe struggled constantly with what he
called “religious inclinations” or “piety.”
Schiller, when asked, “To which of the existing religions do
you confess?” said “To none.” And when he was asked
why, he replied — “For religious
reasons!”
[Note 10]

As the super-sensible world flows into the
human soul from knowledge that is actually experienced, we see how,
especially for enlightened spirits, religion itself also flows into
the soul. Thus religion will once again have to be attained —
through the transformation of the merely intellectual knowledge of
today into spiritual knowledge.